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Twenty-Ninth Session
The session picks up in the past, backdated to before the caravan passes Traitor's Keep and they have their fortunes told. Talith and Sol are to stay behind, Talith to get medical attention, Sol to stay with her rejoin the party in Azkaresh later. The Keepers are now tasked with investigating the blight beneath the city. Raul is now the party's only guard. Besides Kiwi, there are about eight other people in the caravan, none of them armed- the Keepers are actually security, which prompts Max to protest about the lack of pay. The caravan passes through the mountains into the warmth of early summer, and from there into the seemingly endless dunes of the Sandsea. The party fills up on water, which Alana and Celia can create, and Alice uses her special 'find steed' power to get herself a magic horse. Donna predicts a week's journey to Azkaresh, and warns of sandworms- the last attack killed three of her previous mercenaries. Ishaq begins giving Inspiring Leader speeches each day to boost HP, and dubs the party 'the Keepers.' The caravan travels a hard-packed trail through the desert, with Alice using her horse as a scout ahead. Fortunes are told the first night of camping. Alana strives to befriend the camels, and gets spat on. Ishaq uses Prestidigitation to help people feel comfortable with extra warmth/cold/cleaning off spit/dust/sweat. Watch passes uneventfully, and the caravan eventually starts a night march, during which Ishaq sports a kind of cube sticking out of the dune. The party detours to investigate, and finds the cube is actually the remnant of a tent that was buried in a sand storm. Celia uses magic to shift some of the sand off, and Alana turns into a Wise Crab to drop into the tent through a hole and confirm that it has goods inside. About half an hour of sand-digging leads to accessing the tent. The dead body within appears to have been a merchant with two chests of Stuff with him. Chest 1 is trapped, but Markoris handles it. Loot: 25 GP, artistic vase with an unrecognizable god on it (Alana recognizes the god as Sarashim), and some kind of glass globe. Alana and Ishaq get in a little fight over the vase and his insistence on holding on to it and lying to her about his trust in her. Max finds a necklace worth hundreds of gold, which needs to be checked for curses ASAP. Fin opens the second chest and finds 20 platinum and 50 gold, a vial of potion, and a sapphiresque gem with something moving within. ALSO a leather bag with a face stitched onto it - a Sack of Holding. This leads to an investigation of what the sack is already holding, with Max getting a new shortsword and Celia getting new dead body parts (paw and finger), while Fin gets a dead Scarab beetle. Alice uses Divine Sense to check things out, but senses nothing. The bag becomes Fin's responsibility. Ishaq offers Alana the vase, reiterates that he wants a shot at the orb, and suggests she put the orb in the Bag of Holding to conceal it from scrying. Kiwi allows it, says that they can kill the rest of the party if they fuck with the orb. -The orb is now in the Bag of Holding. Meanwhile, the sapphire thing is definitely magical. Ishaq suspects it might be a Summoning Gem. The dead merchant is also put in the bag, to be returned to any associates he might have in Azkaresh. As the party exits the tent, they find little whirlwinds beginning to appear around them as the wind picks up... which ends the session.